


Shout*For: Intermission

by ErinPtah



Series: It Won't Cost Much (Just Your Voice) [2]
Category: Fake News FPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boy Band, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Canon Jewish Character, Fame, Family, M/M, Seaside Heights, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-23 08:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinPtah/pseuds/ErinPtah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Jon-centric interlude for the AU where they're all teen pop stars.</p><p>Our heroes take a break from the fast-paced chaos of their careers to go on vacation. While Stephen and Jimmy take off for New Zealand, Jon's finally getting a trip back to his native New Jersey. But after more than a year away from home and family, he's not going to fit right back in as easily as he expects...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Long Walk Home

**Author's Note:**

> As ever, the characterization of Jon's family is 100% fanon.

The Teen Choice Awards offered a lot more competition than the Disney crew usually got, but Olivia still managed to pick up Choice Actress: Comedy, while the single Shout*For had released on the heels of "A Whole New World" got Choice Music: Love Song...and Stephen was pleasantly blindsided to receive Choice Red Carpet Hottie: Male.

"You are the best teenagers ever!" he gushed in his acceptance speech. "I want to marry all of you!...Wait, is Lisa still backstage?" he asked the presenter (past winner, former boy-band member, and present romantic-drama actor Anderson Cooper). "Can we cut the feed before she hears that?"

The band did a dance number, which they had rehearsed to perfection in between recording the last of the album with the help of coffee for everyone, then gathered onstage for a quick Q&A. One of the pre-screened teenage querants, a girl with a streak of purple in her dark hair and a Shout*For poster visible on the wall behind her, said, "This is a question for all of you: what are you doing for your summer vacation?"

Stephen was too excited not to answer first. "I'm going to New Zealand!" he said, hooking a finger under his collar to lift out a long, fine chain. Instead of his BFF pendant, today it held a glittering gold ring. "It's the weirdest thing: I was talking to Peter Jackson, and I happened to mention I had this thing lying around, and he said I had to catch a giant eagle to the _Hobbit_ movie set as soon as possible! I convinced him to let me take a plane instead."

"I'm going with Stephen," added Jimmy, earning an _aww_ from the crowd. "Just in case he needs to be carried up a volcano at some point."

Tucker said something about going on a nice doom-free vacation with his family, and then it came to Jon, who shrugged. He wasn't going anywhere as exciting as Stephen, or as security-heavy, so his actual trip had been kept under wraps as much as possible. "I'll be staying at home. Take a few long walks on the beach. Get lost in some music. Maybe gaze dreamily out my window for a while. You know, the usual."

 

~*~

 

Outside Jon's window, a layer of moonlit clouds rose up to meet him, rushing past the glass until the plane had broken through and they could see the lights of Newark International spread out beneath.

From the seat next to him, Killer plucked his MP3 player out of his hand and switched it off.

"Oh, come on!" said Jon — in a hushed voice, because they were nearing the end of a four-hour flight (and, for anyone else who had also connected at Dallas from LAX, the end of nine hours in the air). "Lots of people keep them on during the descent! If it really messed with the navigation systems, we would've heard of it by now."

Killer just looked at him, unimpressed.

"Fine," sighed Jon, and sat back to watch the tiny cars speeding like fireflies down the dark roads they were passing over.

The instant the flight attendant gave the all-clear, he had his phone out and was pulling up Marion Leibowitz on the contact list. She picked up on the first ring. "Jon, hey! I take it they just let you turn your phones on?"

"Uh-huh. So I'll see you real soon, okay?"

"Okay! I'm right here by the baggage claim, so when your flight number comes up —"

"Hang on — you're at the airport?"

"Where else would I be? I wasn't going to miss my darling son's big homecoming."

When she put it like that, Jon felt too guilty to be annoyed. "Listen, Mom, just meet us right after the security checkpoint, okay? We'll work things out from there."

On his way off the plane, Jon slipped on his new pair of sunglasses and pulled down the baseball cap with the logo of a team he didn't follow. He'd already dressed that morning in a carefully nondescript grey shirt and khakis, and the messenger bag that held his laptop and some other stuff was also new and brand-name-free. He wasn't in disguise, exactly...but the less attention his appearance drew, the better.

There was no chance of hiding how intimidating Killer looked. They just had to hope people didn't make the mental leap to "bodyguard", and assumed he was the generic-looking kid's scary dad, or something.

Sure enough, they made it through the airport without incident, moving with the crowd of tired and preoccupied fellow-travelers until they dispersed into the non-security-screened world — and Jon spotted his mother. She was instantly familiar, with the same hairstyle he'd seen on their last Skype call, and a shirt he'd seen her wearing a million times.

Naturally, his nothing-to-see-here getup didn't throw her for a second.

"It's so good to see you, sweetheart!" she exclaimed, pulling him into a fierce embrace, then holding him at arm's length to look him over. "Let me look at you. Oh, you've gotten so tall!"

"You are the only person in the world who thinks that," Jon assured her, grinning fit to burst.

"And you must be Killer," continued Mom, letting go of Jon just long enough to shake the bodyguard's hand. "Thank you so much for all your hard work. It'll be a bit of a squeeze getting all of us plus suitcases in the car, but —"

"Mom, didn't anyone tell you?" interrupted Jon. "We've got a ride. And there's a separate person picking up our bags and dropping them off with the driver for us. Killer, you know the way, right?"

Wordlessly, the bodyguard started walking. Jon followed, accompanied, reluctantly, by his mother. "Young man, I know you can afford a whole entourage if you want, but why not save your money? You don't need to pay a professional when your loving mother drove all the way out here to pick you up."

"I'd love to ride with you, Mom, honest," said Jon. "But I need something with tinted windows, and unless you had the car refitted recently...?"

Reluctantly, she shook her head.

"Listen, why don't you come with us?" Jon started fishing around for his phone as they walked. "I can get another driver to take your car home. It'll just be a quick call."

They had made it out into the pickup annex, far upstream from the people catching buses and ordinary taxis. Mom sighed. "No, better not go to all that trouble just for me. I'll be fine on my own."

"It's no trouble, I swear...."

"Not another word about it. You enjoy your tinted windows, and I'll see you at home. But at least take those glasses off, won't you, sweetheart? They're so Hollywood. Let people see your lovely eyes."

Jon's instinct was to say no. It had taken a few embarrassing candids and a few more near misses, snapped during times when he was angry or teary-eyed or (in one awkward instance) hung over, but he had come to rely on the thin extra layer of privacy whenever he could. On the other hand, it was pretty dark out here, and the only person close enough to get a good shot without some professional camera hardware on them was the driver waiting for them.

He stopped beside the car, pulled off the sunglasses and flipped them closed one-handed, and gave his mother a kiss on the cheek. "See you at home."

 

~*~

 

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
the flight attendant says we crossed the International Date Line

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
so now we are IN THE FUTURE

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
why didn't you warn me??

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
Elizabeth swears we don't have to worry about destroying the spacetime continuum because of this

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
but I am not so sure

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
my sister doesn't watch a lot of SF, Jon, she doesn't know these things

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
(PS if any of these messages put causality in jeopardy please forget you ever read them)

 

~*~

 

The house was still standing exactly where Jon had last seen it. He had finally pulled down enough money to buy a new one, but Mom had gotten attached to this place. Which was not to say things hadn't changed: she had used some of the money to start remodeling, and from the photos she'd sent him Jon recognized the new paint job, the re-planted lawn embellished with flowers, and the shadow of the addition out back.

He didn't have much time to admire the exterior, as she ushered them inside. The driver had Jon's things; Killer was carrying his own. "Jon, will you show the gentleman where to put your bags? Killer, you're right through here, follow me...."

Jon's room was the first door at the top of the corkscrewing stairs. As the younger brother, he'd been stuck in the smallest bedroom: the one that didn't even have a closet, and only barely managed to hold a desk, bed, wardrobe, and bureau, even after putting the bed up on stilts over the desk.

The view out his window was now the roof of the addition rather than the empty yard, but the room itself was untouched by the renovations. It still looked tiny even in the absence of all his clothes, books, action figures, and Springsteen posters. Only a few scattered objects were still sitting where he'd left them: the bookends standing in pairs on every flat surface (he'd never had an actual bookshelf before LA), the framed poster headed All I Need To Know About Life I Learned From My Dog hanging on the wall above the desk.

"You can lean those against the bureau," he said to the driver, indicating the pair of Teen Choice Awards trophies, "and stick the suitcase, uh, anywhere, I guess." Scaling the ladder up the side of the bed with practiced ease, he tossed his bag on the mattress and fished out his wallet to get the guy a twenty.

It wasn't until he was back downstairs, and had seen the driver out, that the pictures on the wall caught his eye.

The two big frames were designed to hold a childhood's worth of class photos each: two small rows for grades K-11, a big spot on the end for grade 12. Jon had left before his brother's senior portrait was taken, so this was his first time seeing Larry's frame completely full. And in his own....

Jon had kind of expected the amount of blank space there to be frozen forever. He hadn't given Mom enough credit. The 9th- and 10th-grade frames were now filled with, respectively, his first and most-recent headshots: soulful black-and-white portraits designed to make the most awkward face look sophisticated and professional.

"Did you let that man leave?" said his mother from the kitchen entrance, over the sound of the car pulling down the street. "I didn't get a chance to tip him."

For a second Jon wondered why she thought the guy had to be tipped twice. Then he caught on. "No, Mom, it's fine, I took care of it."

"Oh, honey, you don't have to do that! Not here." She switched gears. "It's only about seven in California, isn't it? Have you eaten? You've had a long day — let me make you some dinner."

"Don't worry, they fed us on the plane."

"And I'm supposed to believe airline food is good enough for my boy?" Coming over to his side, Mom put her hands on his shoulders and steered him to face her. "You need a proper meal. It's getting late on this coast, but for you? I will stay up."

"Mom, I swear, I'm not hungry," insisted Jon. "Either they've gotten better at food storage in the last couple decades, or first class is just that good. Go ahead and sleep if you're tired."

"I'm not," his mother assured him. "But if you're sure...I suppose I could go catch up on the shows I tivoed while I was at the airport. Unless you want to sleep in the den? Your old room is awfully small for a boy your age...." When Jon demurred, she said, "At least take a look before you decide! Come on."

She led him through the kitchen to the new den (sandwiched between a storage closet and the guest room Killer was staying in, the latter's door tactfully closed), which Jon made sure to admire before insisting that he didn't need to sleep there. At last he convinced her to relax and get caught up on _The X Factor_.

Then he parked himself on one end of the long, armless couch to check his texts.

It was a familiar setup. For years, whenever the Leibowitzes were home, they had been in the same room more often than not. Jon had mastered the art of finishing his homework with Larry watching TV across the room; their mother could work on lesson plans at the table with Jon practicing his guitar or both of her sons playing Halo not ten feet away; and there was usually a cat or dog underfoot somewhere.

Sure enough, as if he'd been waiting for them to finally settle down, the current cat — a big black shadow with white patches and yellow eyes — chose that moment to wander into the room. He leaped up onto one of the cushions in the middle of the long couch, tucked his paws underneath himself, and curled his twitching tail around them.

Jon had never put much thought into the habit. In a small, cramped house, it seemed like a natural pattern to fall into. He certainly hadn't kept it up in LA, where, if his aunt didn't insist they have dinners together, they could have spent days in the mansion without running into each other.

Now, though...he could have gone anywhere in the expanded house, and yet the thought of getting up made his chest hurt.

He had just texted Stephen assuring him that trans-Pacific vacations were temporally harmless when Mom dialed down the volume and said, "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah," said Jon, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hands. "I just...I'm...." He swallowed, staring at his feet, and only managed the last part in a whisper. "I really missed you."

She put the show on pause and came around, stopping at Jon's end of the couch to stroke his hair. "I've missed you too," she said softly, while Jon leaned sideways against her and hugged her around the waist. "You know I'm so proud of everything you've done out there — but any time you need to, you can always come home."

Jon squeezed his eyes shut against her stomach, nodded, and tried not to cry too hard.

 

~*~

 

 **Kristen (ಠ ›ಠ)**  
Hey, I don't think we ever covered if this was a kind of Tumblr warning you wanted, so just in case...

 **Kristen (ಠ ›ಠ)**  
Stephen's and Jimmy's tags are currently full of people all a-twitter about Stimmy's romantic New Zealand getaway.

 **Kristen (ಠ ›ಠ)**  
So is Twitter, ironically. Although I know you don't watch that.

 **Kristen (ಠ ›ಠ)**  
Looking like a wise decision right now, btw! Someone found Stephen's sister, the one who's sorta-chaperoning them, and now she's getting all these tweets urging her to support Stimmy in standing up to PR and coming out.

 **Kristen (ಠ ›ಠ)**  
I mean, *I* would find it hilarious if people started tweeting at you to support Stephen and Jimmy's epic gay romance!

 **Kristen (ಠ ›ಠ)**  
But maybe you wouldn't. IDK.

 

~*~

 

"Mom!" yelled Jon, jogging down the stairs. "Did you move my PS2?"

He emerged into the living/dining room to find nobody but Killer, reading a magazine in an armchair under the window to his left. There was motion in the kitchen, though, so Jon veered right, stuck his head through the doorway, and repeated the question.

"Your old gaming machine?" repeated his mother, who was at the stove scrambling eggs. "Oh, I got rid of that ages ago."

Jon gaped. "You what?"

"It's all right, I didn't just throw it away," his mother assured him, completely misunderstanding his horror. "There was an auction to benefit the school last...September? I donated a bunch of your old things then. Don't you have a new one in California yet?"

"I have a PS3 in California! Which would work out great if Anthony was coming to _California_ this afternoon!" exclaimed Jon. "And what else did you take and not tell me?"

"Nothing you couldn't buy new any time you wanted," said Mom reproachfully. "Let's see, there was that old radio...the electric blanket...the desk lamp? No, wait, I put your lamp in the new office. Oh! Your LEGO clock. One of my fourth graders was thrilled to get that."

Okay, this was manageable. Jon wasn't the guy from _The Brave Little Toaster_ ; he wasn't emotionally attached to household appliances. But there was one more thing he couldn't remember seeing since he'd arrived. "What about my guitar?"

"Oh, I saved that," his mother replied. "That's going to be worth a lot of money some day."

Jon let out a groan of relief. Maybe in a decade or so he'd feel up to relinquishing his first guitar to a nice charity auction, but not now. The feeling of being ten years old and having no other way to escape while his parents' marriage was exploding around him was still uncomfortably raw sometimes.

"Your brother will be home any minute now," she added. "Can you get out the plates?"

Turned out Jon had been away long enough that he had to try three cabinets before he remembered where the plates were, and two drawers before he found the forks. All those times he'd had to feed himself in this house, packing lunch for school or making dinner alone on a night his mother had to be at a PTA meeting, you'd think he would have remembered the kitchen layout better.

He had just finished setting the table for four when a car pulled up outside. Killer put the magazine away and got to his feet. "Relax, it's just Larry," Jon told him...then leaned against the front window and saw his brother arm-in-arm with an attractive young woman. "Okay, Larry and company. But I'm sure she's cool."

Killer just looked at him, about as moved by his conviction as a brick wall.

"Fine!" said Jon. "I'll be upstairs. Call me down when it's safe."

 

~*~

 

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
I touched Bumbershoot Cabbagepatch!

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
*Barbecue Crimplesnap

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
*Buckaroo Copperhatch

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
*Build-a-bear Cricketbat

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
*Rinkydink Bandersnatch

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
*Smaug!

 

~*~

 

Jon was kicking back in his desk chair running through harmonica scales when Larry's voice cut in from the hall. "I hope you're happy!"

With his toe, Jon caught the half-cracked door and swung it open. "With a ray of sunshine like you around? How can I not be?"

Snark sometimes worked to cut the tension when his brother was annoyed. This was not one of those times. "My girlfriend just _left_ because she didn't want to be subjected to a background check and _pat-down_ just to have _breakfast_ with me."

"Technically, with me," pointed out Jon, though he knew it wouldn't help. "I mean, she _probably_ isn't a deranged stalker, but on the small chance that she thinks one of us is sending her coded messages with our T-shirts, it isn't gonna be you."

Larry rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Just get downstairs so Mom will let us eat."

Jon put away the instrument and followed him down the narrow staircase, grasping for a way to turn the mood around. "So, how are you liking New York?" he asked. Surely it would cheer his brother up to talk about the prestigious Wall Street internship he'd landed for the summer.

"Fabulous. Wonderful. The opportunity of a lifetime," deadpanned Larry. "Is it enough to thank you in person, or am I going to need to get you a Hallmark card, too?"

"Hey, I'm trying to be nice here!" snapped Jon. Did Larry really think Jon wanted to hold it over him that the rent for his stay in the city was paid with Shout*For merchandise royalties? "I mean the _job_ , geez."

"Well, it hasn't put my face on any T-shirts...."

Their mother and Jon's bodyguard were waiting for them at the dining table. "Killer!" cried Jon. "Larry's picking on me! Put him in a headlock or something, will you?"

Larry flinched. Their mother frowned disapprovingly at him. Killer just gave Jon that flat, unimpressed look again.

"Yeah, I know that's not your job," sighed Jon. "You couldn't at least humor me? ...Maybe it's a little mean, sure, but...Okay, okay." As they took their seats, he said to Larry, "Sorry. I'm not gonna sic my bodyguard on you. He won't let me."

"Oh, good," said Larry shakily. In an undertone he added, "Does he talk?"

Killer glared at him.

"Sorry!" squeaked Larry. "I'm sure you have a very melodious voice! Forget I asked."

 

~*~

 

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
you had better bring me back an awesome present

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
something that gets across the flavor and culture of New Jersey

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
idk, an old car up on cinder blocks or something

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
because I am definitely getting an awesome thing for you

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
a thing that is quintessentially New Zealand

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
a thing that encapsulates the heart and soul of the country

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
I'm not saying it's a sheep but

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
it's a sheep.

 

~*~

 

Anthony had been pre-background-checked, and was a much better sport about the patdown. "If I didn't know better," remarked Jon, watching and cradling the PS3 his friend had brought over, "I'd say you were enjoying that."

"I've been working out," explained Anthony, puffing out his chest with pride. "Never complain about an opportunity to have that appreciated." He grabbed the hem of his shirt. "Want to see?"

"Not in front of my mom, you crazy exhibitionist," said Jon, dragging Anthony past the now-cleared dining table where his mother was working on her laptop. (Larry was in his own room; a phone call with his girlfriend had apparently triggered the rare Leibowitz need for complete seclusion. The cat was napping in a sunbeam.) "We'll be in back, Mom! Knock if you need us!"

They holed up in the den, opening the windows and aiming an oscillating fan to alternate between the two of them, and Anthony stripped off his shirt without a moment's hesitation.

Jon did a double-take. Whatever he'd been expecting, this level of buffness was not it. His formerly weedy friend had _abs_. Biceps that looked sculpted. Pecs you could bounce a quarter off of. "Uh, dude, are you sure we can still be friends?"

"Oh, come on, they make you do lots of dancing and stuff, right? You can't be in that bad shape."

"I'm not," admitted Jon. "But the only reason we started hanging out is because nobody else wanted to be friends with the scrawny Jews with the weird names. So now that I have a normal name and you are _definitely_ not scrawny...."

"...I just barely look like you might hang out with me for reasons other than pity?" suggested Anthony. "Seriously, my social strata at this point is only 'desirable'. Yours is 'stratospheric'. Fabulous body or not, I'd have to be an Olympic athlete to measure up." Jon squirmed in discomfort; Anthony just grinned. "Don't look at me like that! I'm at peace with it. You may have a million groupies, but I?"

He bent his head closer. Jon leaned in to hear.

"I," Anthony said in a low, eager voice, "am about one date away from doing it with Huma Abedin."

"Con...gratulations?" said Jon, trying desperately to remember who that was.

"Oh, come on!" protested Anthony. "You knew Huma! She was in American Government with us. She was hotter than every other girl in American Government put together! How could you not notice? Hang on, I have photos on my phone...."

"I was only in high school for about five months," Jon reminded him. The name did ring a bell, now, though. "Did she do that presentation on the Clintons?"

This turned out to be right, but with Jon's memory so thin, Anthony still felt obligated to launch into a lecture (with illustrations!) on the joys and glories of Huma Abedin. She was brilliant. She was stunning. She was well-traveled — grew up in Saudi Arabia, only moved to Jersey recently for her parents to do their PhD studies at UPenn — "see, Jon, the whole family's brilliant!" She could speak three languages. She could speak for hours (in English) with Anthony about politics. They both had political jobs this summer — "I finally get up the nerve to ask her out and we're both going to be stupidly busy for months" — Anthony a gofer at the mayor's office, Huma an intern with the Obama campaign.

After about fifteen minutes of this, Jon said, "You are really gone for this girl, aren't you?"

"Uh, yeah. That's what I led with, remember?"

"No, I mean — this isn't just 'she's hot enough to melt steel' or 'oh my god, she might touch me where I go to the bathroom,' this is you _liking_ her."

Anthony gave him a roguish half-grin. It didn't look entirely convincing — he might have the torso of an underwear model now, but he still had the same kind-of-doofy face he'd sported in middle school — but it was clearly earnest. "Yeah. Trying not to jinx it, though. So how about you? Got your eye on anyone yet?"

Jon shrugged, awkward. It wasn't that he didn't trust Anthony, but..."Not really."

"Yeah, I was afraid of that. Do you want to?"

"What?"

"Get your eye...or whatever else you want...on someone," clarified Anthony, sliding right back from his romantic transport to his usual cheerful lechery. "I know you're probably worried about publicity and crazy stalkers and stuff, but between me and Huma, we've triaged a couple of girls who are into you enough to go for it, and cool enough to keep it on the down-low for the next few years."

Now Jon was fidgeting for an entirely new reason. "Listen, uh, I...appreciate the effort."

"Great! Do you want to see photos?"

"You took photos of them?"

"Well, obviously I didn't say they were audition photos for the role of Taking Jon Stewart's Virginity," said Anthony quickly. He was scrolling through his phone menus again, leaving the folder with all the adoring shots of his girlfriend. "And, um, don't mention this part around Huma, because she would probably think it was weird, you know?"

"It is weird," said Jon. "No, don't — I don't need to see them, okay? I'm not interested."

"Rejecting them all sight-unseen? That's harsh."

There was a limit to how far Jon could deceive his BFF, and they were rapidly approaching it. "It's not them," he said. "It's...I can't have a girlfriend who isn't vetted by PR, okay? It's in my contract. And if, hypothetically, I wanted to go out with someone who wasn't approved, it would have to be a total secret."

Anthony shrugged. "Sure, but we're not talking about getting a girlfriend here. And like I said, if what you need is a girl who can be discreet...."

"Anthony, you're not listening," interrupted Jon. "If, hypothetically, I had one of these secret relationships already, and I took you up on your very thoughtful offer here, then I would, hypothetically, be a cheating schmuck. You get me?"

"But you...." Anthony trailed off. "...Ohhhh."

"Yep."

"Well, congratulations yourself!" exclaimed Anthony. "So what's she like? How hot is she? How far have you gotten? Hypothetically, I mean."

"Maybe I'll tell you later. If I decide you're discreet enough," said Jon dryly. "Hey, listen, before I forget...did you catch the Teen Choice Awards?"

"The what?" said Anthony. And then: "Wait, is that something you won? Congratulations again."

Jon waved his hand dismissively. "Yeah, we won a couple. This year and last. Specifics aren't the point. The point is, you know what they give you as a trophy? Because I'm never gonna use mine, so I figured, hey, maybe I pass them forward...."

"Jon, you lost me. What do they give you, and why would I want it?"

Jon smiled sheepishly. "Remember that summer you really wanted to learn to surf, but couldn't afford a good board?"

"Yeah...?"

"How would you like two of 'em?"

 

~*~

 

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
spent the afternoon hanging out with hobbits!

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
thought of you  <3

 

~*~

 

If there was one thing Jon missed least about this house, it was the difficulty of getting a little quality personal time. (Had his bed always squeaked this much? He sincerely hoped not.)

He would have liked to pull up some porn, too, but he'd been on a serious guys-giving-blowjobs kick recently, and that was approximately the last way he wanted to out himself to his family.

In the end he settled on locking himself in the shower, turning the water on full blast, and thinking about Stephen.

The real Stephen might still rule blowjobs firmly off the menu, but that didn't mean a guy couldn't fantasize. And not with the mental equivalent of badly-photoshopped banana pictures, either. Jon knew exactly how Stephen looked when he was relishing the taste of something: sucking the cheese dust from a bag of Doritos off the ends of his fingers, running his tongue along the curve of a spoon to get every last dollop of Rocky Road and caramel. And Jon knew — better than anyone else in the world — all the faces and sounds Stephen made when he was almost too turned on to breathe straight.

Under the spray, Jon wrapped his hand around his dick and put all the images together. Stephen on his knees, all hesitation done away with, brimming with eagerness and determination. Stephen taking him in, slowly at first, experimenting with his limits, then going deeper and deeper. Stephen moaning, lashes fluttering, as he realizes how much he loves having Jon in his mouth, loves —

Good thing Jon hadn't been going for endurance here, because he didn't last two minutes.

Lying in bed afterward, he spent a good twenty minutes waiting for the post-orgasmic bliss to override his jet-lagged brain's conviction that it was barely dinnertime, then gave up and and shimmied down the ladder to get a Vaxasopor. He had plenty left over from their last cross-timezone tour. Hadn't consulted a doctor about starting them up again, but Stephen had been taking them consistently this whole time, so it couldn't be too toxic if Jon used them for a week.


	2. Seaside Bar Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon juggles awkward and/or truthy relationships with friends and family. When the whole group heads out to the shore for a few days, it just adds the complication of trying to guess which public places he can visit safely. At least Anthony's got his back. (And, increasingly, his merchandise.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Involves some callbacks to the [Stewart-versus-Cramer interview](http://justfixit.wordpress.com/2009/03/14/jon-stewart-versus-jim-cramer-cnbc-smackdown/). The song given to Shout*For is [Michael Stanley Band's "All I Ever Wanted"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccH9B6ALb54); just imagine a more sparkly-pop cover, with lyrics tweaked to fit California in the '10s rather than Ohio in the '80s.

Jon finally got to hear about his brother's summer finance work the next morning, before they were set to leave for the beach.

Technically Larry was talking to Mom, but they were all in the living/dining room (even the cat, clawing at a string Larry was dragging around; only Killer was absent, out on patrol), with Jon tuning his guitar at one of the dining table chairs while the other two talked on the couches. He might not have a head for numbers, but if Jon had one thing going for him, it was the ear to take in a conversation and work on pitch at the same time.

Talking and tuning at the same time was more of a challenge, so although the D string still sounded flat, Jon stopped fiddling with it when he couldn't resist jumping in. "Hang on, so leveraging is when you...pay a fraction of the cost of some stock, but get to control it anyway? So 35-to-1 means you get to control thirty-five times as much as you paid for?"

Before Larry could snark at him, Mom added, "Be nice to your brother, dear."

Larry sighed and gave him a straight answer. "Yeah, that's what it means. And then you're in debt for the rest of the price. It works with other investments too, not just stocks."

"Okay. And that's totally normal? I could call a broker today and spend a million dollars and suddenly have $35 million worth of a thing?" He couldn't actually spend a million right now, but there were plenty of them waiting in his trust fund. Thirty-five million, on the other hand, was still outside the current range of his bank account.

"Only if you wanted to help cause the next market crash," said his brother.

Oh. Jon had been thirteen when the recession started, so obviously he hadn't been paying close attention to financial news, but just going by Larry's explanation now he could see the problem. "Because too many people were leveraging 35-to-1 all at once, and then suddenly somebody realized there wasn't enough actual money left to cover all the debt going around?"

Larry blinked. "Yeah, kind of."

"Well, geez, if _I_ could figure that out, how come none of the geniuses on Wall Street saw it coming?"

"If I knew that, I'd write a thesis on it and graduate early."

"Don't forget, there was also short-selling and price-massaging and plenty of outright lying," their mother added.

Jon vaguely recognized the term short-selling from old _Daily Show_ coverage, but didn't remember what it meant, so Larry got the ego boost of explaining that too.

"And how about you, Jon?" asked Mom eventually. "How are your studies going?"

"Um," said Jon. He was pulling decent grades, but hadn't lost the feeling everyone was going easy on him. "My tutors are all really nice...."

"And making you work hard, I hope? You know I still expect you to get into a good college, especially now that we don't have to worry how we're going to pay for it."

"I'm doing the best I can," Jon assured her. "But, come on, even if I don't have perfect academics, you gotta admit...I have tremendous extracurriculars."

 

~*~

 

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
Jimmy believes customs will not allow me to bring you a sheep

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
even if I am willing to pay them A LOT of money

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
which I am, btw

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
nothing but the best for my BJF

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
and it's not like they can't spare some

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
look, this is an NZ traffic jam

**Stephen*Colbert**   


**Stephen*Colbert**  
!!

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
but alas

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
it is not to be.

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
I just want it on the record that I did my best.

 

~*~

 

"So, this rental you got," said Anthony, helping the Leibowitzes load bags for a three-day stay into the two cars. (Mom would handle hers, carrying Larry and Larry's finally-background-checked girlfriend; Anthony would be driving his own, accompanied by Jon and Killer.) "Is it right on the ocean, or what?"

"There's a street and some dunes in between," said Jon with a shrug. "But you go a couple floors up and it's got the view, and that's what matters, right?"

"No, what matters is that you never, ever tell me how much it costs, so I'm not too paralyzed by the fear of ruining it to walk around inside," Anthony told him. "Thanks again for putting me up, by the way."

"Not at all, man. What are BFFs for?"

Anthony snickered.

"What?" demanded Jon.

"Do yourself a favor. Never unironically use the term 'BFF' around anyone else on this coast," said Anthony with a grin. "Unless you're actively trying to get beat up. Or unless you've had a sex change and turned into an actual girl."

"If I had a sex change I'd have a really high risk of getting beaten up anyway," pointed out Jon.

"Exactly!" Anthony's biceps flexed under his T-shirt as he swung the trunk closed. "So you'd have nothing to lose!"

Jon, who'd already had his wallet out, automatically held out a twenty.

His friend blinked at it. "What's this? Gas money?"

With a start Jon realized what he'd done. It was a reflex. Someone carries your bags...you tip them.

"Yeah," he stammered, trying to cover his embarrassment. "Gas money. Go on, take it."

"No, it's cool," said Anthony, waving the bill away. "Summer job, remember?"

"From which you're taking a couple days off to hang out with me," Jon reminded him.

"Yeah, so? You're off this week too."

"And I still have three TV commercials currently running, six singles and an album in stores with another available for preorder, and my face on a metric assload of merchandise," said Jon testily. "Listen, the drive over is gonna be about an hour, right?"

Anthony shrugged. "Hour and three minutes, according to my GPS."

"You know how much I'm gonna make in that time?"

"...A hundred dollars?"

Jon folded his arms. "Nine hundred and fifty. Maybe a round thousand if we get all the red lights. A hundred is what I made while we were packing."

"Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz!" cut in his mother's voice, laced with disapproval. "Are you _bragging?_ "

"No!" cried Jon. "I'm trying to get Anthony to live up to the stereotype and take my damn money!"

"Oh! Well, that's different," said Mom sensibly, before aiming her ire straight at his friend. "Young man, if my son let his guests pay for anything on this trip, I would be ashamed. You take that gas money this instant."

Anthony, who had plenty of wiry muscle and at least eight inches on her, folded immediately. "Yes, ma'am."

 

~*~

 

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
JON

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
THIS IS A THING THAT EXISTS

**Stephen*Colbert**   


**Stephen*Colbert**  
AND IT IS NOT FOR SALE

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
I CANNOT HAVE ONE

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
:,((((((

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
THE PHILOSOPHERS WERE RIGHT JON

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
MONEY CANNOT BUY YOU HAPPINESS

 

~*~

 

The car was in the middle of the cruise down 195, ensuring it would be a while before the GPS next cut in to tell them what turn to take, when the radio launched into a familiar opening melody.

"Here I a~am, last of the romantics," crooned Stephen's singing voice from the speakers. Jon's hands twitched with the muscle memory of the chords. "Every time, I get caught in the sway / I'm just a fool~ for a love song / But I wouldn't have it any other way...."

"Great," said Jon, poking at the space-age dashboard. "How do you change channels on this thing?"

"Seriously?" exclaimed Anthony. "This is one of the ones I unironically like!"

"No, it's okay as a song," said Jon. "But the studio recording, there's a part in the third chorus where somebody — can't tell who — snorts when they're taking an in-breath. It sounds terrible."

"It's probably some tiny sound that only you would even notice," Anthony assured him. "Seriously, leave it on."

As if to admonish him, Stephen's voice added, "Baby, just don't say goodnight till the man gets around~ to our~ song / Turn up the ra~di~o till this one's through~..."

Wrapped up in the sound, even at half an octave higher than the range Stephen tended to fall into now, Jon couldn't focus on anything else. This wasn't a great time to lose himself in sexy fantasies, so he tried to focus on something...mundane. Domestic. Maybe a scene with the two of them not even interacting, just doing their own thing in parallel, Leibowitz family style.

It wasn't easy. Stephen was such a shining beacon of energy and attention-seeking, it was hard to imagine working alone in the same room with him unless he was asleep.

But maybe some time he could be reading _The Fellowship of the Ring_ to the dog again (or to...whoever else a guy might read to), while Jon leveled up in Doom. Or surfing Tumblr, while Jon went over scales on the harmonica, and Briar Rose napped in between them. Or on the phone with Jimmy, the dog gnawing on a chew toy at his feet. Jon could occasionally tune in to catch a laugh and a ridiculously out-of-context snippet of conversation, and smile to himself before going back to the Huffington Post....

"Oh, wow, you're right," said Anthony, cutting into Jon's reverie. "That's really blatant. I'm never going to be able to unhear that."

"I know, right?" said Jon. Even though he'd managed to miss the noise this time around. "I don't understand how nobody caught that and made us re-record it. Probably broken the spell for thousands of preteen girls already, when they suddenly realize Shout*For has phlegm."

In the bag at his feet, his phone chirped. He wasn't going to answer, but Anthony said, "Who's texting you? Anybody I've heard of?"

Jon retrieved the phone and tapped in the security code. "Depends. You heard of Lisa Munn?"

 

~*~

 

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
did not kno u were a Mets fan

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
my condolences :(

 **Jon S.**  
???

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
ur hat, boo

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
airport pix now up on Gawker

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
lookin sharp in plain grey

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
u will make LA's Best Dressed any day now

 **Jon S.**  
I'm not a Mets fan, the whole point of that hat was to be misleading

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
u sure? b/c the coach just tweeted to offer u free season tix.

 **Jon S.**  
The shirt is just the kind of thing I wear when nobody professional is dressing me

 **Jon S.**  
Really?

 **Jon S.**  
Ok, I guess I'm a Mets fan.

 

~*~

 

The view from the spacious townhome's rooftop deck was indeed fabulous, but the heat was like an oven and there was no way to escape the pounding sun. Jon and Anthony ended up camping out on the second-floor balcony, where they got the breeze off the ocean but were protected by the shadow of the third-floor balcony.

Jon's mother made lemonade. Condensation dripped icily down around Jon's hand and puddled on the railing under the glass.

"So you're actually friends with Lisa Munn?" said Anthony. "It's not just PR? What's she really like?"

"Well, she's Olivia to her friends," said Jon, trying to come up with things that were true but still relatively safe. "She's...fun. Really driven about her work, but she's great to kick back and relax with. Got a wicked sense of humor. And yeah, she's really close with Stephen, but me and Jimmy are friends with her too."

"That's so cool. Any chance you could introduce us?"

Jon raised his eyebrows. "Seriously, dude? You're already planning out how to hit on her? What would Huma think?"

"Huma understands that we all get a list," said Anthony airily. "If she had a chance to fool around with what's-his-face from _Twilight_ , I would be completely understanding. Likewise, if I struck up a conversation with...with Olivia Munn, and she happened to find me strangely intriguing, who could blame me for whatever happened next?"

"You do understand that this is never going to happen," said Jon.

"Hey, a guy can dream, can't he? Besides, it's not like she's actually spoken for, is it? I mean, her whole thing with Stephen Col-bert, that's totally bearding. Right?"

Jon grimaced, and took a gulp of lemonade to avoid having to answer.

"If you can't tell me, I get it," added Anthony. "But just for the record, I'm not judging. If your friend's gay, I think it's terrible he's not allowed to just say so. And as soon as your Disney contracts are up, I hope he finds himself a fantastic guy with a huge dick who will love him for the sparkly butterfly he is."

Jon's whole face went hot. Pressing the cold glass against the side of his neck, he stammered, "If, completely hypothetically, Stephen was flamingly gay, I am sure he'd appreciate the sentiment."

 

~*~

 

 **Jon S.**  
Heard one of our songs on the radio today, thought of you :)

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
so you wouldn't have thought of me at all if you hadn't put the radio on??

 **Jon S.**  
no, I just mentioned that as an example.

 **Jon S.**  
It's more like:

 **Jon S.**  
Had lunch, thought of you

 **Jon S.**  
Packed up the car, thought of you

 **Jon S.**  
Looked at the sky, thought of you

 **Jon S.**  
Breathed, thought of you

 **Jon S.**  
Etc.

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
nice save, sir  <3

 

~*~

 

Evening found them all in the same room again. Jon's mother was reading a paperback novel. His brother and the girlfriend were on the loveseat, engrossed in a laptop and a tablet respectively, but with their knees pressed together the whole time. Jon kept catching sight of them and feeling green with envy.

And then there was him and Anthony, watching TDS and MMC like old times, laughing at the same lines, joking during the commercials.

"Brian's trying to get me booked on the show for the promo tour," he remarked during the Moment of Zen. "Not as a regular guest, just to do a short bit and then drop the name of the album, that kind of thing."

"You're kidding," said Anthony. "You might get to be _on_ the show? And you're just telling me this now? How much else have you been you holding out on me?"

The words felt like a rock dropped into the pit of Jon's stomach. He made an extra effort to breathe from the diaphragm, and the tension softened a little. "Well, I...."

"Yeah?"

"I haven't mentioned that he's also trying to get Stephen on _this_ show," said Jon, as the glitter and lights and scrolling LED glitz of the MMC intro blasted onto the screen. "And I really hope that works out, whether mine does or not, because Stephen would probably kill me if I got on and he didn't. He's always wanted to, y'know...meet Miley Cyrus."

"Don't blame him," said Anthony dreamily.

Jon shoved him with an elbow. "What, now you're into cougars too?"

"Oh, come on. This is a universal desire. There are coma patients who want to meet Miley Cyrus."

"I guess."

The boom camera swung in over the C-shaped desk, iconic host beaming as the audience cheered.

"Although now that I think about it," said Jon absently, "I'm not sure if Stephen understands that she does the show in-character."

 

~*~

 

 **Jon S.**  
Wanted to ask something, no pressure, you can def. say no if you'd rather not.

 **Jon S.**  
I haven't talked to mom yet, still working up to it

 **Jon S.**  
can I also tell Anthony?

 

~*~

 

"Grab the shopping list," Jon ordered Anthony halfway through the afternoon. "We're making an A&P run."

His family was down at the beach: a stretch of badge-access ocean sand swarming with hundreds of people who were ready to spend the day doing nothing in particular. He had sworn up and down that he didn't mind them going, that he was glad to stay in the rental with the air-conditioning and the not-being-mobbed. Anthony had volunteered to stay with him, and for a while Halo had kept them occupied.

But by now the cabin fever had gotten too much for Jon to stand. Which was why he pulled on sandals and sunglasses, asked if he could borrow one of Anthony's hats, and then, hesitantly, asked if he could maybe borrow the car keys.

(Next summer he was springing for a luxury resort. Twice the price, but they came with private beaches, and could deliver the food straight to your room.)

"Learner's permit, seriously?" said Anthony as they cruised down the grid of sleepy peninsula streets, Jon in the driver's seat and Killer in the back. "You're gonna be seventeen in like a month."

"Three months," corrected Jon. "And I've got all my hours in! I'm gonna take the test as soon as I get back in-state. Listen, if you only had the roads around LA to practice on, you'd have taken forever to get this far too."

In the grand tradition of beachgoing shoppers, Anthony sauntered into the store bare-chested. Jon and Killer had both brought shirts: grey for Jon, a terrifyingly loud Hawaiian print for his bodyguard. Jon was torn between feeling annoyed that they were both going to draw attention, and hopeful that they would draw any attention off of him, the way a sugar-water trap keeps bees from landing in your soda.

His lingering anxiety melted to a whisper as they filled the cart with no interruptions. Frozen burgers and hot dogs, ketchup and mustard, fresh grapes and strawberries, his mom's favorite brand of wine cooler (Killer would be paying), a quarter pound each of the types of cheese Larry's girlfriend had requested (Anthony ordered at the deli), ice cream and a full ensemble of toppings.

Halfway down the dessert aisle, Anthony exclaimed "Stop!" and slid back the glass door on his side of the cart. Framed by a puff of freezing air, he pulled out a box of popsicles...featuring cartoons of a smiling Jon, Stephen, Jimmy, and Tucker between the logo and the product photo. "We've gotta get these."

Jon hid a smirk behind his fist. "Don't feel obligated."

"No, I mean, we've gotta get them because they're hilarious! Are you on any other food right now? Please say you are."

"We did a yogurt commercial a while ago, but I don't know if they ever tied it in with the product," said Jon, marshaling his memories. "Oh! We did a photoshoot for some Nabisco ads more recently. We might be on the Oreos or something."

(Most of what Jon remembered from that photoshoot was Stephen licking cream out of the sample Oreos. He did it by holding the cookies vertically and running his tongue along the sweet crevice between the two halves. The photographer had finally ordered him to stop, and he'd had a minor sexual identity crisis later on when Jimmy explained what it looked like.)

Anthony grinned. "Back to the snack aisle!"

When at last they approached the checkout line, their pile of groceries was topped by two boxes of Chips Ahoy! plastered with a photo of Shout*For smiling, and enthusiastically labeled You Could Win VIP Tickets! "If by some crazy chance you win this, you're giving it away," he muttered. "Any time you want to see a concert, I will buy you the ticket myself."

"Could I give it away to Huma?" asked Anthony.

Jon rolled his eyes behind his sunglasses. "If you want to invite Huma to a concert, I'll buy her ticket too."

The two of them got out in front of the cart as they pulled into a checkout line. While the woman ahead of them finished paying for her chips and soda, Jon pointedly avoided looking at the tabloids, but Anthony had no such hesitation. "Lisa Munn Diet Disaster! Can't Stop Losing Weight," he narrated. "Jon Stewart's Secret Girlfriend...."

A pointed punch in the arm from Jon convinced him to shut up.

Halfway through bagging things up, there was a pause in the rhythmic beeping of items being scanned. Jon looked up to see if they'd finished already...but no, the cashier was just looking at him, then at the photo on the Chips Ahoy! package, then at him again.

"Problem with the chips?" asked Jon. Not his wittiest moment.

"No problem!" stammered the cashier. Stray curves of hair kept falling out of her ponytail into her face. "You're...I don't want to bother you, but aren't you..." She pointed to Jon's face on the photo. "This guy?"

"Nope," said Jon. "I am in a Shout*For cover band, though. We do impersonations. Look us up some time."

 

~*~

 

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
is Anthony an it-getter?

 **Jon S.**  
Yeah.

 

~*~

 

"Don't give me that look!" snapped Jon. Killer wasn't authorized to outright _stop_ him from going anywhere, and for once Jon had no intention of being swayed by his gaze of deepest disapproval. "We were fine at the A &P. We'll be fine here too. I want my fudge and skeeball, dammit!"

"Your bodyguard can't pat down everyone on the boardwalk," pointed out Larry's girlfriend. She'd been the last one out of the post-beach shower, and still had her hair up in a towel.

"I'm not inviting all of them home!"

"The others could buy some fudge and bring it back for you," offered his mother halfheartedly.

"Mo-om!" protested Jon.

She sighed. "Just a suggestion. They can certainly make sure someone else goes up and pays for everything, though. No sense drawing you to the cashiers' attention if you don't have to."

"And it'll be dark," added Jon, plying Killer again. "And nobody's gonna know to look for me."

"And they'll all stay together," put in his mother. "You'll keep an eye on your brother, won't you, Larry?"

"Mo-om!" protested Larry.

When both Killer and Mom glared at him, he groaned and caved. "Fine! We'll babysit."

Their mother smiled brightly. "You kids have fun."

 

~*~

 

 **Stephen*Colbert**  
ok

 

~*~

 

_Down in New Zealand, not long afterward._

Stephen and Jimmy waved and blew kisses to everyone who had stayed to the end of the signing event, then ducked through the flurries to the waiting limo. They had drawn a respectable crowd. It was good to know that even here in the future, and on the wrong side of the planet where the seasons were backwards, there were people with the sophisticated taste to be Shout*For fans.

Almost everything was good here, frankly. Stephen had Jimmy with him, and he had his favorite sister, and the entire _Hobbit_ research team had been forced to admit that he was the world's foremost Middle-earth expert, and he was millions of miles away from Ned. If he could find some way to bring Jon and his puppy, he would have wanted to stay here forever.

Speaking of which...Stephen checked his phone. Still nothing new from Jon. He shoved it back in the pocket of his coat and sighed a long, dramatic sigh.

"Anything wrong?" asked Jimmy.

"What? No, no, everything's just peachy," said Stephen. "Except for the tiny little detail that yesterday I gave Jon permission to talk to two different people about me, and I haven't heard a word out of him since!" A terrible thought struck him. "What if his mom doesn't like me, Jimmy? What am I going to _do?_ "

"Of course she'll like you," said Jimmy automatically. "How long has it been since you've heard from Jon?"

Stephen pouted. "Two whole _hours_."

"What? But you said...."

"It was a couple hours ago _here_ , but it was yesterday afternoon _there_." Stephen had explained this time-travel business to Jimmy at least four times already. Sometimes his BFF was really slow on the uptake.

Jimmy, who had been idly browsing on his own phone, suddenly did a double-take at the screen. "Probably just got other things on his mind," he said, handing it to Stephen. "Whatever he's doing...I mean, was doing yesterday...it's got him trending on Twitter."


	3. Local Hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon's in Jersey, it's summer, and there are traditions that must be followed. Fame or no fame, he's getting in at least one trip to the boardwalk. And if people start recognizing him, well, he'll sign that bridge when he comes to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New bonus art: [boy band AU Jon and "Stephen" meet canon Jon and "Stephen"](http://sailorptah.deviantart.com/art/Shout-For-The-Meeting-of-the-AUs-394625164).

_New Jersey, at the start of Jon's night out._

A box of fudge and a round of smoothies on Jon's dime went a good way toward cooling tempers with Larry and his girlfriend (whose name Jon really should've written down or something).

The midway was its usual dense grid of booths with bright lights and loudly rattling games, every gimmick framed by displays of those most timeless prizes: massive plush Spongebobs, Stewie Griffins, Tweety Birds, and Hello Kitties. As a kid Jon had never been allowed to play enough rounds to win that kind of jackpot (not that he'd had the aim for it), and he still couldn't shake the feeling that it would be an unconscionable waste of money to go all-out now. Maybe Larry felt the same way, because he only went through two rounds of darts before giving it up, winnings-free.

Anthony took a spin on one of the wheels of chance, and won a light-up yo-yo. Then he took the offer to take another spin, to go double or nothing...and lost it again.

The girlfriend played Frog Bog until she won something, turned down the offer to double her prize, and walked away with a cheap plastic toy plane.

Killer kept himself squarely on one side of Jon, and made sure there was always somebody stationed on the other. Jon didn't even bother asking to play any games. He'd save his mojo for the arcades.

Then, at one of the water-cannon booths (aim consistently into a clown's mouth to fill a balloon until it pops — first one to finish wins!), he spotted, between hanging clutches of Angry Birds and Rastafarian bananas, a whole school of Finding Nemo fish.

Stephen would adore one of those. And, by extension, would adore Jon for bringing him one.

"Hey, Killer, can I ask you a gigantic favor...?"

 

~*~

 

"Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe that might be a record!" enthused the booth attendant. "This a big hobby of yours, sir?" (Killer gave her a short shake of the head.) "A professional, then? Incredible! Planning to go again? Double your points, double your winnings?"

It would take at least one more win to earn a really super-sized Dory. "Yes," said Jon under his breath to Anthony.

"Go for it!" yelled Anthony. As payment for his help, he relieved Jon of the strawberry smoothie and took a sip. "Didn't know you were such a hardcore Finding Nemo fan."

Jon shrugged. "You don't know that. Maybe I just really, really love Ellen."

"Who has the courage to try their luck against the professional?" cheered the booth attendant, trying to drum up interest in manning the last two water cannons. So far only a suburban-dad type had stepped up to the plate. A couple of preteen boys in baseball jerseys were begging their grandmother for the money to go again, to no avail; an olive-skinned teenage girl who had done pretty well in the last round was moving on entirely, apparently recognizing that the odds were not in her favor.

In a voice so low Jon almost didn't realize she was talking to him at first, Larry's girlfriend said, "Have you ever, you know... _met_ Ellen?"

"I wouldn't say 'met'," hedged Jon.

It didn't slow her down. "What's she really like? Is she nice? I know it's dumb to get your hopes up about celebrities, but I don't think I could take it if Ellen wasn't nice."

"Listen, all I know is, while she was backstage before winning Teen Choice Comedian, she said hi to us, and we said hi back," said Jon. "Olivia talked to her for like ten minutes, because Olivia's a gigantic fangirl of hers, so, you know, apparently she was nice to Olivia. That's all I know, I swear."

A couple of laughing young women in tank tops and flip-flops shouldered their way past the group to get to the water cannons. "Hey, watch it!" said Larry.

"Sorry!" said the woman, half-turning to throw the word over her shoulder, ponytail whipping back and forth with the head motion before she stopped in front of a cannon.

Then she turned back just long enough to give them a once-over.

Her friend, whose hair was cut short and held back with a woven headband, was digging through a purse for change. Ponytail whispered something in her ear. Headband turned to look at them too.

Jon made a point of stomping on Larry's foot before turning to Anthony and saying, "So, back to Dory...great fish, or greatest fish?"

The putative conversation didn't stop Headband from interrupting them. "Excuse me — aren't you —?"

"Not the droid you're looking for," said Jon. He even made a short pass with his hand, just in case.

It worked about as well as you'd expect. "You're _funny_ ," cooed Headband, grinning like Jon had invented the idea of Star Wars jokes on the spot. "Can you just — I have a pen around here somewhere —"

Jon waved her back toward the booth. "Listen, go play the game, okay? I'll still be right here when you're done."

No sooner had he said the words than Killer was looming over them. He'd walked away from the next game after all, wielding a stuffed Dory that was (only) about the size of a large dinner plate. Keeping between Jon and the booth attendant's line of sight, he nodded for them to go.

"Or not," said Jon.

 

~*~

 

After some anxious cajoling of Killer, Headband and Ponytail tailed the group as the bodyguard hustled them away, cutting through a corner pizza place where even the air seemed slightly greasy. At the side exit, one that opened onto a dark cross-street rather than back onto the boardwalk, he let them pause long enough to get a photo. Jon obligingly rested one arm over each woman's shoulders, aimed a closedmouthed smile at the camera Anthony was holding, and tried not to worry about what kind of tabloid headlines this would spawn. (Jon Stewart's _Two_ Secret Girlfriends?)

"Do me a favor," he said, scrawling his signature as high up the neckline of Ponytail's tank top as it went, "don't Instagram that or anything for a couple hours, okay?"

"Of course not!" said Headband reassuringly. "Private tweets to friends, and that's it. Scout's honor!"

Jon signed across her T-shirt's shoulder blades, waved goodbye, and traded the sharpie in to Killer for a mini-bottle of hand sanitizer as they scooted out the door. Under his breath, he added, "So, uh, private tweets, are those really private?"

"Totally invisible to anyone but the sender," said Anthony. "You have nothing to worry about."

"Are we leaving already?" said Larry's girlfriend as they emerged out the side of the building and took a ramp down to ground level. The cross-street was much quieter; you got spillover light from the sides of the pizza place and the arcade across from it, and could just see the last fading violet of the sunset over the boardwalk itself, but it was pretty dark, too.

"Just making sure we're not being followed, I think," said Jon. They wove between a couple of parked cars and started moving north on the next street over.

Larry, who had been stuck holding the plush fish while Killer did Serious Bodyguard Things, shoved it into Jon's hands. "Because we have to flee the terrible threat of attractive women wanting to take photos with you?" (The girlfriend cleared her throat.) "Not that I have anything to be jealous of!"

Okay, Jon was annoyed. There was no reason his brother shouldn't be able to imagine how two enthusiastic fans could snowball into a twenty-person terrifying mob. "Oh, were they attractive?" he said, with false lightness. "I wasn't really looking."

He'd scored a point, he could tell.

"I guess objectively, they were," added Anthony, backing Jon up. "Hard for me to judge, though, because all I can see when I look at women is that they're not as stunning and glamorous as Huma."

"You are so full of it," growled Larry.

"Yeah, obviously he is," said the girlfriend. "But I'm sure his lady friend still appreciates when he makes the effort."

Jon exchanged a high-five with his BFF. Two hits in a row. Double the points, double the winnings.

"Oh, hey, see, Killer thinks we're cool now," he added, as the bodyguard turned on the next cross-street and led them back toward the lights and the clamor. "No big deal. Unless you were really desperate to see one of the places on that block specifically."

 

~*~

 

Anthony gestured with the remains of the strawberry smoothie (now mostly water) toward the big open front of a T-shirt place. "Shout*For album cover, black shirt, top left. And on the blue, on the right, second column from the end...that's a lyric from one of the new singles, right?"

"No, that's a lyric from A Whole New World, which I'm pretty sure people were into before this spring," said Jon. Scanning the stall, though, he caught sight of a shirt with an unambiguous silhouette of the four of them, and another one silkscreened with Olivia's grinning face and the big LM logo that marked half her merchandise. If they'd stopped to look closely, he probably could have found more.

It was followed by a stand that offered fresh-squeezed lemonade and funnel cakes smothered in indecent amounts of sugar. Then a souvenir-and-sparkly-kitsch place that made Jon's heart twinge a little, knowing it probably had a million things Stephen would have adored, and a layout too cramped for Jon to safely go look at any of them.

"I don't see any Shout*For tattoo designs," added Anthony as they passed the next place. "Bet we'd find one if we went in, though."

Jon made a face. "I'm not sure I want to know."

"Well, I do! You guys go ahead and hit the arcade. I'm gonna check." He doubled back, tossing the empty cup into a freestanding trash can along the way.

The arcade they'd been aiming for was next, and the rest of them veered into it, entering the (nice and open) aisles weaving around the games that filled its carpeted floor. A cacophony of blinks, boops, chimes, clangs, and tinny video game intros swallowed them up as soon as they crossed the threshold.

Larry stopped at a couple of claw games near the entrance, one full of generic stuffed animals and the next one packed with Pokémon. To his girlfriend he said hopefully, "Want me to get you one of these?"

"Hmm." She eyed the heap of non-name-brand critters. "Can you grab one of the turtles?"

It wasn't crowded at all in here, so Jon felt safe enough to move a little farther in, until he spotted the one thing he'd been looking forward to almost as much as skeeball: the quarter-pusher. Behind a pane of something clear and heavily reinforced, a couple of mechanical shelves were piled high with coins, cantilevered past the shelves' edges to architecturally improbable lengths. Drop a single new quarter at the back of the pile, and it looked like the next push couldn't help but shove the whole setup over the edge and send coins raining down into the dispensary slot. Jon had _never_ been allowed to waste any money trying.

With Killer always at his back he detoured to a coin machine at the edge of the arcade, withdrew five rolls of quarters, and started systematically feeding them to the quarter-pusher.

 

~*~

 

"They have this fantastic big design of Stephen Col-bert's face, which they offered to tattoo on my arm," reported Anthony.

Jon winced, without looking away from the machine. "Please tell me you passed it up."

"Only after great internal struggle."

Another quarter clinked its way down through the slots of the machine.

"They didn't have anything of you. I also turned down the option of working together with them to design an image of your face that's worthy of being plastered all over on my torso."

"Well, geez, Anthony," said Jon automatically, "all you had to do was ask."

His BFF didn't miss a beat. "Jon, while my heart belongs to Huma, and more generally to the fairer sex, I will absolutely not hold it against you that you suggested that."

Yet another quarter landed with a soft plink on the moving top shelf.

"Hey, ah...how long have you been doing this?"

Jon inventoried his remaining quarters. "Uh...for about one and a half rolls."

"And have you ever seen one of these things pay out?"

"Never in my life," said Jon, dropping another quarter in.

"Jon," said Anthony seriously, "you have gone mad with power."

"I know," said Jon with a dizzy grin. "You have no idea how much fun this is."

"Oh, for the love of...Cut that out and come play DDR with me."

"How fast can I burn through money on DDR?"

"Depends. How bad are you at dancing?"

 

~*~

 

Jon flatly refused to play through any of Shout*For's songs on the Dance Dance Revolution machine. ("I'd keep trying to do the actual dance steps, you'd have an unfair advantage.") They settled on one of Bill O'Reilly's top-40 tunes instead.

Jon lost anyway. He could move fine when he'd practiced, but it was different trying to follow steps on the fly, and on a game he'd never practiced but Anthony clearly had.

"I concede the DDR," he said, as the game announced PERFECT! of Anthony's steps and a dismal GOOD for Jon's. "Still gonna whip your ass at skeeball, though."

A quick look confirmed that Larry and his girlfriend were still at the claw machines, so Jon and Anthony crossed the arcade and squared off at two adjacent skeeball games, Killer standing sentry behind them. "Best three out of five?" suggested Anthony.

"No way. Too easy for one off game to screw up the whole thing. Five games, highest total score wins," countered Jon, perching Dory on the arm of the free machine next to his. "Killer, can you keep track of the scores?"

Killer stopped scanning the room to look darkly at him.

"Right. On duty. Never mind. We'll just compare piles of tickets at the end."

He and Anthony put their quarters in the slots at the same time. Twin rows of the heavy, palm-fitting balls were released, rolling down for the taking. Jon weighed the first in his hand, feeling it click against his purity ring (he was contractually obligated to wear the thing in public), and took aim.

They both had plenty of summers' worth of practice. Anthony was clearly through any awkward period he'd had of not knowing his own strength; he never sent a shot crashing too high above the center target, or rolled it up so slowly that it disappeared into the lowest slot. But somewhere along the line Jon had been trained to a keen edge in hand-eye coordination, and he was first surprised, then smug, to find himself sinking the tiny corner pockets more often than not.

His in-the-zone streak lasted until the moment he rocked back on his heels from a perfect corner shot, pumping his fist in victory, and almost crashed into someone.

"Sorry!" he exclaimed, hopping out of the way of what turned out to be a woman somewhere around his mom's age. And she had one hand on the bar of a hefty stroller, too. Definitely didn't need random guys knocking into her. "My bad."

"Jon Stewart?" said the woman. "Can I get a photo? Just really quick? I don't want to interrupt you."

"Um," said Jon. She'd be interrupting him either way, but he had kinda started it. "Sure, go ahead."

"You are so sweet! I knew you would be." She fished a smartphone out of one pocket of the monstrous stroller, then lifted its passenger, a toddler of no more than two, out of the seat...and handed the latter to Jon. "Here. Support the head, yes, that's right, you've got it!"

"A bloo bloo?" gurgled the toddler. It was a fair-haired, snub-nosed little creature of indeterminate gender, wearing a black shirt captioned SOMEBODY'S CRABBY! over a cartoon crab. The second it realized it was in some stranger's arms instead of Mommy's, it lived up to the label, face scrunching up and going red while its eyes filled with tears.

"Oh, come on, sweetpea, smile!" cooed the poor baby's mother, fiddling with her phone. To Anthony, she added, "Excuse me, would you mind?"

"Not at all," said Anthony with his most genial grin, the one Jon knew was going to kill in politics some day. 

The woman handed him the phone and leaned against Jon's side, beaming. Jon struggled to support the wriggly little toddler without, like, damaging it or anything, thankful his one-way shades would keep him from looking too obviously panicked. The toddler bawled as the flash went off. Just like any average family getting a shot of their boardwalk outing for the photo album.

There were going to be headlines of Jon Stewart's Secret Baby slapped on this one, he just knew it.

"You're so good with him," the toddler's mom enthused, ignoring the child's glaringly-obvious signals that Jon was Not Acceptable. "I bet you're great with your little brothers."

Jon tensed. He did, if you wanted to be technical, have two younger half-brothers. He'd never met either of them. Not that it was anybody else's business. "I'm pretty sure he wants to be back with you now."

Mercifully, the fan took her sobbing son off Jon's hands. "Do you think you'll ever want kids of your own?"

 _No way in hell,_ thought Jon, but was cautious enough not to say so.

"Right now," said Anthony, stepping in to save him once again, "we're just focusing on living it up while we're young. Speaking of which...my friend here has a skeeball tournament to finish."

Even after the wailing toddler was carted away, though, Jon was no longer In The Zone. He finished up the game he was on by sinking a bunch of tens in a row. As the next set of balls was rolling down the aisle, a fresh set of flashes went off: a real camera, wielded by a guy this time, in the collared shirt and nametag of an arcade employee. "Don't mind me!" he said, when Jon looked up with a start. "Just keep right on playing. Skeeball fan, huh?"

"Well, yeah," said Jon, before remembering that he wasn't allowed to do free endorsements. Shouldn't be too big a deal, though, right? It wasn't like he'd promoted the specific arcade. "Listen, if you could avoid putting that on Tumblr or anything until we're gone, that would be great."

"No problem! When we do put it on Tumblr, would you reblog it?"

"Probably not," said Jon honestly. "I mostly just use mine to follow Stephen's."

Once again he tried to get back into the game. The slot was spitting out a truly anemic pile of tickets at this point.

Under his breath, Anthony said, "We can stop and count tickets now, if you want."

Jon compared their aisles. His friend's was distinctly ballsier. "You're three shots behind me. Wouldn't be fair."

"Fame handicap? You've had three people distracting you. Seems fair to me."

"Don't need your special treatment, Weiner," said Jon, setting his jaw. "You just brace yourself for my comeback."

 

~*~

 

Five games behind them, and with each set of tickets folded into a neat zigzag, Jon's pile was unmistakably shorter than Anthony's.

"You think we have enough yet for a decent prize if we put them together?" asked Anthony, trying to eyeball the combined mass of points. "Or should we keep playing for a while?"

Jon almost would have preferred it if Anthony had lorded the win over him. At least that would've been normal. "I guess...."

"Dad! Look, Dad, look! It's Jon Stewart!"

For once the excited voice sounded like it might be in Shout*For's target demographic. Jon followed the sound to a row of racing games and pinball machines, where a round-limbed girl of maybe twelve was tugging urgently on the shirt of a man with stubble and sunglasses pushed back up over his head.

"Who?"

"Jon Stewart!" repeated the girl in a hushed, awed voice. "From the _band!_ "

"Don't be stupid, Kaylee," said the dad, not looking up from the pinball game. "Why would one of your band boys be all the way out here?"

"Yeah, _Kaylee_ , don't be _stupid_ ," added a grade-school boy with the same light brown hair as the other two, running back and forth on the carpet waving a plastic Godzilla. "That's not your _stupid_ TV boyfriend!"

"They're not stupid!" wailed Kaylee.

Anthony nudged Jon. "Dude, you gonna go defend your lady's honor, or what?"

Jon exchanged a look with Killer, got a nod of reserved approval, and shoved the tickets and Dory into his friend's hands. "Hold my fish."

"Well, sweetie, they're nothing special, either," the dad was saying. "Just a couple of pretty faces and a whole lot of autotune."

Kaylee probably wasn't listening. With Jon actually walking over to her, she'd gone perfectly still, eyes huge.

"Hi," said Jon with a little wave. "Excuse me, I couldn't help but overhear...."

"Hm?" said the dad. "Oh, sorry, don't mind my daughter. She's got it in her head that you're in this pretty-boy group she's obsessed with."

That snapped Kaylee briefly out of her trance. "I am not obsessed!"

"Of course not," said Jon reassuringly. "Just a fan, am I right? Shout*For has plenty of fans. You have any favorites?"

"S-Stephen," stammered the girl.

Jon had been asking about songs. Probably should have specified. "Totally understandable," he said, rolling with it (and ignoring the way Anthony was cracking up behind him). "Can I tell you something? Stephen's my favorite too. How about the music? Got any favorite songs?"

"Favorite _gay_ songs," opined the little brother, making Godzilla gnaw on Jon's leg.

"Scintillating analysis," said Jon. "I can see you have a promising future career as a music critic. So, about those favorites...?"

The song Kaylee named was Shout*For's second single and first chart-topper, a one-note piece of sugary fluff about being hopelessly in love ("with you, girl"). Not one of Jon's favorites. It was, however, one he got really into playing: the lyrics might be simplistic, but the harmonies were no cakewalk, and when faced with that kind of challenge Jon was kind of compulsive about getting it exactly right.

"Well, you're in luck," he said, "because I know that's one of the ones on the DDR machine. You play DDR at all?" When she nodded rapidly, Jon looked to the dad and said, "Is it okay if I borrow her for a game? I'll cover the cost."

 

~*~

 

Turned out Jon did better, not worse, with a Shout*For song selected. It was easier than expected to disconnect his brain from the official dance steps — they only danced about half the time, after all, and played on their own instruments the other half — and he knew the rhythm down to his bones, making it child's play to bring his feet down exactly when the beat demanded.

Kaylee still got the higher score. "I take it you've practiced?" said Jon.

"All the time!" exclaimed the girl. The music seemed to have broken the ice with her self-consciousness. Good. It had broken some tension with Jon too, being able to spread a little joy in a way he had some control over, and in a way that fit into the flow of his evening rather than interrupting it. "Well, I don't have my own DDR stuff, but my friend Amanda does, and she has _all_ your songs, and we know _all_ the lyrics, and —"

"I know all the lyrics too!" broke in a new voice.

And that was when Jon realized he'd drawn a crowd.

About eight new people were crowded around the DDR machine, filling the aisle completely. Anthony, along with Kaylee's dad and little brother, had managed not to get pushed aside only because Killer was an unmoving anchor. Most were female, but not all; it was a guy, fedora on his head and sweatshirt tied around his waist, who was addressing Jon now. "Can I play you next? Do they have All I Ever Wanted on that machine?"

"No, me next!" yelled a woman in a UPenn shirt. "I love you, Jon!"

"Uh, sorry, I'm all DDR'd out for the night," said Jon. "I can sign stuff real quick, though...." A flash went off somewhere to his left. "...Or do pictures. That works too."

Fedora was unsatisfied. Rounding on Kaylee, he demanded, "How did _you_ get him to play with you?"

Immediately Killer was standing between Fedora and the girl, looming over him with even more intimidation than usual.

"...although I concede that it is none of my business, and am very happy for her!" squeaked Fedora, backing off.

"You should probably take off now," Jon told the rattled Kaylee. "But listen, it was great meeting you."

"You too!" stammered the girl, and jumped off the platform to run over to her family. "Dad! Dad, you got pictures, right? Right?"

"Got a couple," said her father. To Jon, who had come down off the same side of the machine to stick close to Killer, he added, "You really are one of those band boys, huh?"

"I really am one of the pretty-boys with the autotune," confirmed Jon. If he'd been a little gutsier, he would've added, _And your kid's not stupid._ But that would invite more drama than he was prepared to handle. "Listen, do yourselves a favor: if any of this shows up on YouTube, don't read the comments."

 

~*~

 

Killer kept the line of autograph-seekers and photo-takers orderly and fast-moving, and inched Jon towards the front of the arcade as he worked through the group. Anthony had been able to creep off uncontested to let Larry and the girlfriend know their departure was imminent. Jon churned out signatures and smiles as rapidly as he could, and fielded questions from "what's your favorite pizza topping?" to "why are you ashamed of your Jewish heritage?"

(Okay, he didn't field that last one himself, just referred it to Killer, who glared at the woman until she suddenly remembered she had an urgent appointment harassing other Jews somewhere else.)

"So, um, bad news," said Anthony, ushered by Killer to the center of the crowd. "They're gone."

Jon finished signing a T-shirt with the band's faces on it (apparently bought minutes ago at a nearby T-shirt stand for exactly this purpose) and handed it back to its new owner. "What do you mean, gone?"

"Not at the claw game. Not anywhere else in the arcade. Didn't answer when I went outside and yelled for them a couple of times."

"Great," said Jon darkly. "Can you call them while I finish this up?"

While Anthony dialed, Jon posed for the last photo of the group...with a woman who kissed him on the cheek right as the flash went off. (Headline: Jon Stewart Has At Least Two Secret Girlfriends And Is Cheating On Both Of Them!) "Hey, it's Anthony. Where are you guys?"

Best-case scenario, his brother and/or the girlfriend had needed to duck out and find a bathroom. Worst-case, they'd decided to abandon the group and find some quiet corner to make out. Not that Jon didn't sympathize — he knew he'd rather make out with Stephen than be forced to follow Larry around for a night. But then, he and Stephen didn't have the luxury of being able to kiss wherever they wanted, with no risk of losing millions or getting chewed over by every tabloid and gossip site in the English language, so all things considered, Jon still figured himself the more tragic figure here.

"...What do you mean, funnel cake?"

Killer herded them the last few feet up to the wide-open entrance. As soon as they stepped around the last display case of prizes between Jon and the open air, somebody shrieked Jon's name, and half a dozen flashes went off. The whole stretch of boardwalk beside the arcade was packed, mostly with teenagers and young adults, the ones in the front now spilling towards him.

Jon was _not_ stopping to give autographs to every single one of these people.

"Of course it got crowded!" snapped Anthony into the phone. "Who do you think they're all here for?"

Killer plucked the phone out of Anthony's hands and held it to his own ear. In a deep-ish but matter-of-fact voice, he said, "Go find the car. Get inside. Call this number back once you're in."

As if to punctuate the whole overwhelming night, the last sound Jon heard while still on the carpeted floor of the arcade was a deafening metallic ringing: the sound of a whole lot of coins raining down onto hard plastic. Someone — possibly the first person who had tried it after Jon left — had won at the quarter-pusher.


	4. The Ties That Bind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jon finally has a couple of coming-outs, along with a couple of much-needed heart-to-hearts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With a brief detour involving cameos from _The Jaquie Brown Diaries_ , a New Zealand comedy starring a self-centered, status-obsessed, needy, pouty, and hilarious TV news correspondent played by an actress of the same name. If you enjoy shows with that premise, look this one up some time.

A carpet of shadowed sand lay in rolling dunes below Jon's dangling feet. To his left, past Anthony, was the muted clamor of the boardwalk as seen from an angle where you got just as much of each building's industrial-grey roof as its bright flashy front. To his right was a long slope that fed into the ocean, roaringly loud and impossibly dark.

Surrounded by fans in an environment with no VIP exits to be found, instead of trying to funnel them all the way back to where the car was parked, Killer had steered Jon and his friend onto the skyride. It was as good a way of buying time as any.

"Boy," added Anthony, surveying the scalps of the people who were devoted enough to follow Jon all the way to the loneliest, most boring end of the boardwalk, "they really love you, huh?"

Jon grunted something noncommittal.

"Wish I'd asked for some of their numbers," added Anthony. When Jon groaned, he added, "Hey, just because Huma is an angel doesn't mean I'm not allowed to have a backup plan."

They reached one of the supporting posts that held the cables, their bucket bumping lightly up as it went over the crossbeam. Jon tried not to look. He had a hard enough time convincing his brain that this setup was stable without focusing on the most fragile-looking parts.

"I think we lost all our prize tickets," said Anthony presently.

"Oh, geez," realized Jon. "We forgot Dory."

"Ooh." Anthony paused. "At least it's ironic?"

"That's not funny."

"Dude, relax. It's not like you can't just buy another."

This was true. Of course, it wasn't like Stephen couldn't just buy one for himself, either. It was the principle of the thing.

"You know, you can see the _Jersey Shore_ house from some point up here?" remarked Anthony. "At least, you can in the daytime. I don't know about now. I'm not sure what it looks like from this angle. Do you —"

"I gotta tell you something," said Jon.

Anthony shrugged. "All right. Shoot."

Jon rested his forearms on the metal bar not-buckling them in, and stared at a row of tire tracks down on the sand. Where was he supposed to start? "You'd have to keep it secret, though, okay?"

"You know how much dirt I have on you already? If I was interested in sharing, I'd have a book deal by now."

"Yeah, but I mean, this has to be total. Not a word gets out. Not so much as a hint. Not even if you're with a hot girl who promises she'll throw off all her clothes and jump you right there if you tell her."

"You drive a hard bargain, Leibowitz."

"Are you saying you can't handle it?"

Anthony sighed. "All right, all right, I swear. Not a word. Loose lips sink ships, and all that."

For a second Jon was thrown by the phrasing. Then he realized his friend wasn't making a pun, and probably didn't even know what bonus meaning 'shipping' could have in this context. "Good. Because, first...and again, I will disown you if you ever let this get out...you're right about Stephen."

"Uh-huh. So he really is...?" Anthony waved his hands in what was probably meant to be a demonstratively swishy way.

"Has the soul of a beautiful fairy princess," said Jon. "And before you ask, yes, Olivia is faking her side of the relationship as a way to support him, and no, you still do not have even the tiniest sliver of a chance of getting with her."

"Aww. Does that mean she has a secret non-fake boyfriend?"

"No," said Jon, with perfect if misleading honesty. "But, well. Stephen does."

"Good for him!" said Anthony. "Hey, are you allowed to be telling me this kind of thing?"

"I got...special permission."

It didn't seem to strike Anthony that there was only one way that would make sense. "Cool. So does everyone in the band have secret relationships, or is it just you two?"

"Just us."

"Ah. Do they at least know about each other?"

"Who?"

"Stephen's secret boyfriend and your secret girlfriend! They could form a support group or something."

"Anthony," said Jon. "There's no 'them'. It's just us."

"I don't —" Anthony caught himself before he could finish. Jon could practically see the gears turning. "You...never actually said it was a secret _girl_ friend, did you."

"I did not."

"Well!" Anthony sat back against his side of the bench-seat. "I'm not sure I approve."

A wave of dizziness hit Jon hard. His palms went clammy, his chest tight; the sand seemed to be receding below them, opening up an endless drop under his feet.

"I mean, I did specify the other day that I hoped Col-bert would find a guy with a _big_ dick, so —"

"Hey, fuck you," said Jon, punching his friend in the shoulder, and not gently, either. The panic was fading, but not as quickly as it had hit. "Don't scare me like that, god."

"C'mon, you know I wouldn't really...."

"Yeah, I know _now_ ," snapped Jon.

Anthony considered him for a moment, then, to Jon's surprise, pulled him into a tight, steadying, genuine hug. "Sorry."

With part of his mind still swimming, Jon gave himself permission to cling. Just a little. "Don't worry about it."

The comfort had soaked through him, smoothing over the last of the fear, by the time Anthony spoke again. "So does your family know, or can I not even bring it up around them?"

"They don't know. I'll clue you in once I tell Mom," said Jon, pulling back. Their bucket was approaching the far end of the skyride; only two more posts stood between them and the dropoff, with Killer waiting at the gate and what looked like a couple of uniformed officers holding back a few dozen fans. "And, listen, fair warning...photos of that hug are gonna make the Internet rounds, and the tabloid headline is gonna be Jon Stewart's Secret Boyfriend."

"I, uh, didn't think of that," admitted Anthony uncomfortably.

"Yeah. Sorry."

But his friend was already rallying. "Not that it's a problem! Bring on the Internet sex rumors. If they decide I'm gay, I will take it as a credit to all this time I've been spending at the gym. The important thing is that Huma knows she can trust me." He paused. "As long as the Internet doesn't get the idea that you would top."

 

~*~

 

As directed, the car was waiting on the last cross-street by the skyride. Killer shooed Jon in first, then Anthony, then took the last spot in the back seat. Larry's girlfriend was behind the wheel, freeing Larry himself to gape at the crowd before turning back to check on Jon. "Are you okay?"

"Never better," said Jon shortly. "Just drive, will you?"

They peeled away slowly, managing not to run anybody over, and slid off down the street.

"Don't start toward the house yet," said Killer. To Larry, he added, "Tell your mother she might want to get new plates."

"Yessir," said Larry. People tended to say that around Killer, even if they'd never sirred another human being in their lives. "I didn't know it could get...like that."

Jon was in full-on hermit-crab mode, arms crossed, huddled against the side of the car. He wouldn't have been facing his brother at all, but looking out the non-tinted window was an unappealing option and turning his head toward the seat would have just been childish. "You know, I appreciate that you're always gonna see me as the stupid little brother who ruined your Walkman by filling it with glue, once drew cartoon dicks on a school report the morning before you turned it in, and used to think endlessly repeating 'cheese tits' was the height of comedy. But you could at least make the effort to notice that that hasn't stopped _other_ people from seeing me as a currently-successful pop star, and treating me like one."

"I'm sorry, okay? I just told you, I didn't know! I get it now!"

In spite of himself, Jon kind of wanted to cut Larry some slack. But only kind of. "At least tell me you managed to save me some funnel cake."

 

~*~

 

Jon's mother gave him a good fifteen minutes of holing up in his room and stewing, then knocked on the door. Jon let her in. He even offered her what was left of the funnel cake (though by now it wasn't much).

"No, you enjoy it," Mom insisted. "You're a growing boy. I can always get my own if I want some."

This was true. _She_ could. Jon had another bite, licking powdered sugar off his fingers and trying not to scatter any on the bed.

"I understand you had an eventful night," his mother began. "How are you feeling?"

"Oh, fine," said Jon. "Just wallowing in the knowledge that I will never...." _...be normal again._ "...get to go back there."

"Well, I'm sure you can work up the money to buy your own boardwalk one day," said Mom.

"Gee, thanks."

"I'm only trying to help."

Jon sighed. "I know."

"I've been meaning to come in here and look at your clothes," she continued. "So I can write down all the sizes. I'm sure I've been sending you things that are too small for ages now."

"Suitcase is over there. Go ahead," said Jon, trying not to show his relief. Now he could be rid of the sting of being reminded with every package how far he was from his family, without having to go through the embarrassment of actually telling his mother she no longer knew how tall he was. "And I'm sure I can get someone from the wardrobe department to send you updates, or something."

"Or you could keep me up-to-date yourself," Mom pointed out.

"Mo-om," groaned Jon, only half-joking. "That's what I have _people_ for."

"Of course it is." She gave him that wry, gentle half-smile as she passed, the one he'd started recognizing in the mirror. "My busy celebrity son."

Jon finished the funnel cake, twisting a paper napkin around his sticky hands with only moderate effectiveness. He wasn't going to get a much better setup for a private conversation than this. And after surviving everything else he'd been through tonight, why not take one more plunge? "Hey, um, Mom?"

"Mmhmm?"

"There's something I gotta tell you."

His mother was busy unfolding clothes now. "Go ahead, I'm listening," she said, without looking up from his suitcase.

Well, either Jon would get her full attention with this, or he wouldn't. "You know Stephen Col-bert?"

"Yes? Well, not personally. But he seems like a nice boy."

"Yeah, he is." Jon was cross-legged on the mattress now, fiddling aimlessly with the napkin. "And, listen, I'm really glad you think so. Because he's, well. He's sort of my boyfriend."

There was an excruciatingly long silence.

"Mom? Did you —"

"Sweetie, I will love and support you no matter what, and as long as you two are good to each other I am very happy for you," said his mother quickly. "You'll just have to give me a minute to adjust, okay?"

"...Okay," said Jon, relieved and baffled all at once.

"It's just..." She put down the T-shirt she'd been folding and sat back. "You've always been so _very_ interested in women."

Jon's cheeks flamed. Yeah, he had, and she knew it...in way more detail than he liked to think about. (His twelve-year-old awakening to the existence of free porn on the Internet hadn't come with any understanding of how to cover his tracks. Back when they had used a single family desktop, no less.) "I still am!" he protested. "Just...not exclusively."

"Well, it's always good to try new things," said his mother. Like it was no bigger a deal than, say, trying Korean food for the first time. "You two are being good to each other, aren't you?"

"Yes, Mom."

"And you're being safe? Just because neither of you can get pregnant —"

"Mom!" wailed Jon.

"Don't you 'mom' me, young man. This purity ring business they're putting you through doesn't mean they've skipped your sex education classes, does it? I made it very clear that that had to be part of your tutoring."

Jon buried his face in his hands. "Yeah, I got them." He wasn't sure whether Stephen had, but they could work that out as they went.

"You know how to use a condom?"

"Yes, Mom."

"And have you found a nice, discreet way to get your hands on some?"

"Oh my _god_ , Mom, we haven't even done anything where you'd _need_ them —"

"You are both teenage boys, and I was not born yesterday." She held up a hand before Jon could protest. "I'm not saying I don't believe you. I'm saying that just because you haven't _yet_ is no excuse not to be prepared."

"Okay, okay, I'll get some!" exclaimed Jon. Undercover sex-related purchases were what online shopping was for, right? Or he could hit up one of his friends, or friends-of-friends, who wasn't so famous that a checkout person would think to leak their purchases on Twitter.... "I'll figure something out. I swear. Can we drop it now, _please?_ "

"Of course, sweetheart," said his mother, pleasant as could be. "So, when am I going to get to meet this young man in person?"

 

~*~

 

 **Jon S.**  
Hey <3 Went well w/both Mom + Anthony. Going to sleep now, but I'll be in all day tomorrow, so call me when you get a chance, ok?

 

~*~

 

The lights were out and Jon was on the verge of drifting off when he got another knock. This time it was Larry. Jon considered sending him away, but decided it wasn't worth the effort.

"I wanted to make sure you weren't mad at Gina," his brother began.

Oh, right, Gina was the girlfriend's name. You'd think Jon could remember with it. What with them both starting with G-I, and all.

"Because, I mean, either of us could have said we should go back and find you, but it was my job, not hers."

"Uh-huh," said Jon. "Are you saying that 'cause Mom told you to?"

"...I would have said it even if she hadn't."

Sure he would have. "Won't be mad at Gina. Don't sweat it."

"Good! Good," said Larry, rocking back on his heels in the doorway. He clearly still had something to say. Jon waited for him to spit it out. "And — and I know you're not stupid, okay?"

"Kind of you to notice."

"No, I mean, you're smart!" said his brother sharply. "You pick things up fast, and you understand them enough to break them down for other people — I've heard you doing it with your friends, when you'd have study groups or whatever — and sure, you think dick jokes are way more hilarious than they are, but you also laugh at jokes that are actually complicated, and —"

"Hey, whoa, slow down," mumbled Jon. Smart or not, there was a limit to how much he could follow right now. "Listen, can we maybe finish this tomorrow? I already had my pill, and I'm kinda too loopy to have a great conversation right now."

Larry seemed taken aback. "You're on pills?"

"No, it's fine, it's just Vaxasopor," Jon assured him. "Only on trips. For all the time zone changes. Gotta be able to still get to sleep."

"Oh," said Larry. "Well. Good night, then."

Jon's eyes were already closed. "G'night."

 

~*~

 

Stephen burst into the hotel suite well ahead of his sister and Jimmy, tossed his coat and messenger bag on the floor next to his bed, and fell into the desk chair facing his laptop. Filming on the _Hobbit_ set had run long — long enough that it would have risked bumping up against local child labor laws if Stephen had a cameo, which he might or might not, he wasn't telling — and he was about to miss the time he'd said he would be available for a call.

Skype took forever and a half to get running. At last Stephen found the familiar username in his contacts list, opened a call, and was gazing into the face he'd been wanting to see for days. Even getting to see Gandalf's face in person didn't quite make up for it.

"Hi!" he said breathlessly. "How are you doing? Do you miss me? Are you being a good girl while I'm gone?"

On-screen, Briar Rose (cradled in Olivia's arms) looked taken aback, then started frantically searching the room for the source of her missing owner's voice.

"She's being a very good girl," Olivia assured him. "Is your camera on? We're not getting video."

"It's off," said Stephen. "You're brushing her every day, right? And taking her for walks?"

"Are you kidding? You know how hot it is up here? I'm brushing her two or three times a day, and she still can't sit down anywhere without leaving a puppy-shaped pile of fur when she gets up. Turn on your video, this is getting weird. Unless you're still wearing elf ears or something?"

Stephen felt the tips of his ears, just in case. Nope, the only point was the natural one on his weird ear. (Fans said it was cute, but he figured they were just being nice.) "No, my ears are fine. It's...I lost a contact, okay? So I'm stuck wearing glasses until I get home."

"By the way, I'm here too," said Jimmy, coming up behind Stephen. "Hi, Olivia! Hi, Briar Rose."

"Hey, Jimmy. Let me guess. Stephen looks great."

"Are you kidding? He's totally rocking the geek-sexy look."

"I don't want to look geek- _anything_ ," complained Stephen.

"Uh-huh," said Olivia. "Which is why you keep letting the paparazzi get photos of you having nerdgasms all over the _Hobbit_ cast."

"That's different!"

While Stephen was complaining, Jimmy reached over his shoulder and switched on the webcam. Stephen had to yank his glasses off in the instant before it loaded.

"Oh, much better," said the Olivia-shaped blur. She directed the blur of Briar Rose's face toward her own screen. "See, girl, your Stephen's right there."

"So, speaking of movies!" said Stephen, changing the subject. "Yours started filming this week, right? How's that going?"

"Not even filming. We just started doing full-cast readings," said the Olivia-blur. "Already so much less fun than our movie, though. Like, the girl who's playing my new stepsister? Jaquie Brown? You ever spent any real time with her before?"

Stephen had bumped into most of the less-famous Disney teen stars at events and whatnot, but he'd only spent time with the ones on the Shout*For show and the ones Olivia knew through _Star Girl_ , not from any of the other series like _The Jaquie Brown Diaries_ or _Serita and the Family Singh_. "No, why?"

"Urgh, where to start? She acts like she's the big headlining name. Keeps talking to me like I should be grateful for the favor she's doing me, letting me get some press out of this by riding her celebrity coattails."

"Hang on, Jaquie Brown?" said Jimmy. "Isn't she a Nickelodeon girl?"

"Which just proves my point!" exclaimed the Olivia-blur. "I'm a household name! Her, people can't even tell apart from Jackie Clarke!"

"Have you tried sneaking out to a bar with her and getting plastered together?" asked Stephen. "That's what got me and Steve to bond when nothing else could."

"No. I dunno. Maybe I will." She cuddled the squirmy-looking puppy. "But how come they couldn't have made this someone else's big-screen debut instead, huh? Serita Singh's ready for it too, and she's supposed to be super nice and down-to-earth behind the scenes. Would it really be so much to ask to make a movie with two Asian-ish leads?"

Stephen blinked. "Wait — you know I don't see race — Serita Singh isn't white?"

 

~*~

 

It was going to be another long day inside for Jon, this time without so much as a grocery run to break it up. Larry and Gina promised to head back to the boardwalk later and pick up as much junk food as he wanted, then took off for the beach.

He had an email from Brian, filling him in on PR's strategy going forward; Mom sat with him as he read it, and helped him write out a reply. Yes, he approved the statement they'd drafted. No, he hadn't been using crude language, he just had a friend with an unfortunate last name. No, he did not want to set up a promotional appearance at any of the seventy-four New Jersey organizations that had invited him to stop by while he was in the state.

A handful of friends had texted him "hope you're okay" type messages. He fired off a boilerplate reassurance-and-thanks to Olivia, Kristen, Tina, Wyatt, and Steve.

When that was finally dealt with, he and Anthony settled in to stream a couple of movies: putting all their real-world burdens aside to escape into a land of terrible writing and worse acting, whose only saving grace was having a _ton_ of hot actresses.

Anthony had plenty of opinions on which of the women on-screen he would, given the opportunity, totally do first. Once Jon determined that he'd never met any of them in person, he joined in — and, when his BFF asked, tentatively pointed out a few male actors he wouldn't kick out of bed either. It was...nice. He'd gone so fast from "what, me, attracted to guys?" to "better make sure it's always clear that Stephen's the guy I want most" that he'd never had a chance to sit down with someone and just...perv out, without any filters or self-censorship, conscious or subconscious.

(It was all pure fantasy, obviously. Nothing unfair to their respective significant others. Especially when the whole reason Jon wasn't watching something with a plot in the first place was so he could walk away in a heartbeat the second Stephen called.)

Halfway through a monster movie where the monster was blatantly plastic, his phone went off.

"It's Stephen," he told Anthony, accepting the call. "You aren't going to be offended if I leave you alone for half an hour, right?"

"Completely sympathetic," said his friend. "But what are you going to do for the other twenty-eight minutes?"

Jon threw a decorative pillow at his head and carried the phone upstairs.

 

~*~

 

Jimmy talked briefly with Jon while the call was on speaker, then picked up on Stephen's subtle hints that they needed some alone time, and announced that he'd been meaning to email Tina.

He was even kind enough to close the door when he left.

Stephen had fished a hands-free headset out of his luggage at some point, and he popped this on now, freeing him to lie down and stretch without losing the connection. "Okay, we're alone now. So is your mom ever coming out to LA? Do I get to meet her? You want me to meet her, right?"

"I don't know about LA," said Jon, "but you know how we're going to do that show in New York in a couple months anyway? She promised to be there. Hinted that maybe we should take her out to dinner. And yeah, I'm not worried at all. She's gonna love you in person."

"She better!" exclaimed Stephen. "I work very hard to be lovable!"

Jon's giggle was like music to his ears. "Well, it's working. I told her how it was you who picked out the ring, and how I keep it in the box she sent me. She was charmed as hell, let me tell you."

Stephen rolled over on his stomach on the mattress, sitting up on his elbows. He'd seen the classy little keepsake box with the JSL mongram, but hadn't known..."That box came from your mom?"

"Um, yeah," said Jon. "I have to put it somewhere nice, you know? Can't just throw it in a drawer at the end of the day."

There were unfamiliar fluttery things going on in Stephen's chest. Kind of like the warm feeling you got from being with family, only different, because there weren't any conditions or expectations weighing it down.

"I'm, uh...." Jon's voice went low and velvety-dark. "I'm not wearing it now, though. How about you?"

Stephen hastily tugged off his purity ring. "Nope," he said, tucking it safely in a pocket of his coat. "Not at all."

"Then, do you wanna...fool around?"

"Jon, I don't want to embarrass you, but you should know that there's a tiny logistical problem with your idea."

"No, I mean, like, phone sex? Where we talk about things we'd be doing to each other if we were in the same room. And we, well, how does your religion feel about jerking off? Because mine is okay with it. If you catch my drift."

"Mine is...willing to look the other way." Stephen stretched out on his back again, heels kneading divots in the comforter. "O-okay. We can try it. You start."

"Sure," said Jon. "What are you wearing?"

"Dolce & Gabbana, why?"

Jon sighed. "Okay, let me say this another way. What would I have to do to strip you out of it? Walk me through it. Step by step."

 

~*~

 

There were fireworks over the pier, and after some searching Jon's group found an empty stretch of beach where they could spread out a couple of towels and watch. The nearest company was a family with a bunch of kids playing a lax game of baseball fifty yards down; in the gloom they could probably barely tell each other apart, let alone identify Jon. Besides, once the show started, they were too busy watching sparklers scream through the air before lighting up the sky in glittering showers of blue and green and gold.

Jon was strolling along the edge of the wet sand where the waves broke and rushed up over his feet, watching the explosions and enjoying a chocolate cupcake slathered with peanut butter frosting, when he heard from Olivia.

 

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
good newws boo! u wer ttly righr

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
jackquie is a barrell of lauhgs when shes smashd

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
life of the pqrty :)))

 

Jon stuffed the rest of the cupcake in his mouth and stuck the crumpled wrapper in his pocket, freeing up his hands to type a reply.

 

 **Jon S.**  
Are you sure you're texting the right person?

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
oh sgit

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
ment thar for stephen

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
ignor plz

 **Jon S.**  
Put your phone away until you've slept it off ok?

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
ok

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
very wise advce jon stewarrt

 **< 3 Olivia <3**  
c u when u get hpme :)

 

That wasn't actually right. He would see her at the album launch party, along with Stephen and the others coming straight off their various vacations, and _then_ they would all pile on a plane and go....

Home?

Was LA home now? He still didn't like it much, and didn't feel like he fit in, but somehow enough of it had seeped into his bones that he couldn't just slide comfortably back into the place he'd left in New Jersey, either.

Maybe there was somewhere else waiting for him. Somewhere he'd like to live, where he'd fit in and be comfortable even the way he was now. It wasn't like he couldn't afford to move around: once his contract was up, he could pick out a house anywhere that seemed promising and give it a try. Even if he'd have to go all the way to New Zealand before he found it.

(If he was really lucky, he'd land in a place where Stephen could be happy too.)

In the meantime, though, Jon turned around and ambled back up the beach. California might come more naturally to him in some ways, and it was where most of his friends were...but not all of them, and not his family, either. Awkward as it had gotten sometimes, they did love him, and if he couldn't come back here for good, he should spend as much time with them as possible while he had the chance.

Besides, Larry had the rest of the desserts.


End file.
